The Republican Party has been doing a lot of hand-wringing and finger-pointing since the presidential election. Half the conservative columnists and bloggers say the GOP lost because it overemphasized social issues such as abortion and gay marriage. The other half says the party didn't emphasize them enough. And everyone denounces Project ORCA, the campaign's attempt to turn out voters via technology.

But I've got a suggestion for cutting short the GOP angst: Sarah Palin for president in 2016.

You think I'm joking? Think again.

In 2008, Palin, running as my party's vice presidential candidate, was widely supposed to have cost John McCain the election. But that wasn't so. A national exit poll conducted by CNN asked voters whether Palin was a factor in their voting. Of those who said yes, 56% voted for McCain versus 43% for Barack Obama.

Furthermore, Mitt Romney, the GOP's anointed contender this year, got almost a million fewer votes than McCain did in 2008. (Meanwhile, President Obama, although winning reelection, lost far more voters than the Republicans, with nearly 7 million fewer voters checking his name on their ballots than did in 2008).

Millions of Americans didn't much care for Obama and his Obamacare spending blowout, but they didn't feel like voting for Romney either. Some said that Romney didn't resonate with recession-hit blue-collar folks in swing states because he "looked like the boss who outsourced their jobs," as one blog commenter quipped.

Gabriel Malor, writing for the New York Daily News' blog, pinpointed another reason: By focusing his campaign mostly on serious economic and political issues such as the national debt and tax incentives, Romney failed to take into account the fact that large segments of the electorate neither know nor care much about serious economic and political issues. What they — a group sometimes euphemistically called "uninformed voters" — do know and care about are the tugs on their emotions, fears, revulsions and heart strings provided by hours and hours of uninterrupted television watching .

The Democrats understood how to reach that constituency. When a barrage of Obama campaign TV ads told them that the GOP wanted to take away their contraceptives or that Bain Capital killed someone's wife, they took notice. When Obama strolled the hurricane-stricken beaches of New Jersey in his bomber jacket, they were snowed. As Malor put it, Obama won on "binders, Big Bird, birth control and blame Bush."

Palin can more than keep up with the Democrats in appealing to voters' emotions. Hardly anyone could be more blue collar than Palin, out on the fishing boat with her hunky blue-collar husband, Todd. Palin is "View"-ready, she's "Ellen"-ready, she's Kelly-and-Michael-ready.

A Palin "war against women"? Hah! Not only is she a woman, she's got a single-mom daughter, Bristol, to help with the swelling single-mom demographic. On social issues, Palin, unlike Romney, has been absolutely consistent. And let's remember that most Americans, whatever their view of choice, disapprove of most abortions.

Gay marriage? Palin opposes it. But she is also a strong advocate of states' rights, and I'm betting she'd be fine with letting states and their voters grapple with the issue on their own. Remember that all of America didn't swing toward approval of gay marriage on Nov. 6. Three reliably blue states and their voters did. If she were smart, Palin would recruit a member of her impressive gay fanboy base — yes, she has one — to help run her campaign. I nominate Kevin DuJan of the widely read gay conservative blog HillBuzz, a Palin stalwart since 2008.

Palin's son Track is an Iraq war veteran, so she can be proudly patriotic without being labeled another George W. Bush, looking to do aggressive nation-building. She seems aware there is only one nation in need of building right now: America.

Furthermore, looks count in politics, and Palin at age 48, has it all over her possible competition, including Hillary Rodham Clinton, who will be 69 by election day 2016 and who let someone talk her into adopting the flowing blond locks of a college student, making her look like Brunnhilde in a small-town Wagner production. Men love Sarah Palin, and she loves men.

She's tough as nails too. After Election 2008, she was supposed to have been through. This year eight of the 14 GOP candidates Palin endorsed for Congress won election or reelection, including tea party favorite Ted Cruz for a Senate seat in Texas.

Sure, there is going to be never-ending nastiness from the left, but she's already lived through that once. Katie Couric? A has-been. Tina Fey? Her shtick was already wearing thin in 2008.

There are also the snooty East Coast Republican intellectual types, such as Peggy Noonan, who look down their noses at a woman who doesn't shop at Neiman Marcus and didn't attend an Ivy League university. But Peggy made a fool of herself calling the election for Romney on Nov. 5. Who's going to care what she and her ilk have to say next time?

Some Republicans will say Palin has too much baggage from 2008, and we need to look for a new Sarah Palin. But I don't see what's wrong with the one we've got. Ever since the 1990s, Republicans have been looking for the next Ronald Reagan. Reagan is now revered in bipartisan circles, but during his presidency he was, like Palin, ridiculed by liberals. They cited "Bedtime for Bonzo" and sneered at his no-name college degree.

Sarah Palin is the new Ronald Reagan: charming and affable and unwilling to back down if she's right. I can't see what's wrong with that.

i have to admit, it's SO nice not to hear repubs fawning over paul ryan or palin anymore.

Christie has matured a lot - his Sandy handling and SNL appearance showed he's probably taking his meds and very much under control now.Rubio is a little wet behind ears, but a very good choice for a party in need of attracting hispanic votersRand Paul is developing right on pace, not making any mistakes, getting shrewd quick, and a great 2016 option.

I think suzanna martinez is the next paul ryan - looks good on paper but too eager to please, too wet behind ears - namedropping various calibers of gun is great red meat for the base, but will turn off women voters and swing voters very quickly. If she's pandering with that fake smile - like palin in 08 and ryan in 2012 - she's still 5 or 7 years away from being a shrewd, tough MFer that doesn't NEED to put on the tense smile and high pitched voice to make people happy. You hear newt, jeb, hilary, bill clinton speak - their faces are calm, their words mean something. They're not doing the "it's so nice to meeeeeeeeet you!" spiel that phony people make in job interviews when nervous.

GOP in good shape for 2016 Still, if hilary chooses to run, they better choose a grown-up. Scott Walker or Scott Brown, stay home, you are one-trick ponies.

The relative fawning over Rubio is ill advised and reflects a lack of nuance. Rubio background is Cuban. Latinos from Central and South America do not identify with Cubans for very good reasons most people are aware of, and they are not going to vote for Rubio simply because he has a Latin name and speaks Spanish. By the way, just from listening to him speak for one or two sentences anyone from Mexico or Central America can tell that he is not from their country. Americans tend to think that Latinos are all like. Wrong. He may have made it to the Senate, but his voice will not resonate with many Latinos outside of the Cuban community.

Throw in his financial stains from his days as a GOP operative, and he is a flawed national candidate. Many in FL were willing to look past that scandal, but a national audience would not. In the same way that Palin could impress in Alaska but flop on the national stage Rubio can only be a big fish in small pond.

Republicans: GOP needs to get with the timesBy KASIE HUNT and STEVE PEOPLES

To hear some Republicans tell it, the Grand Old Party needs to get with the times.Some of the early prescriptions offered by officials and operatives to rebuild after devastating elections: retool the party message to appeal to Latinos, women and working-class people; upgrade antiquated get-out-the-vote systems with the latest technology. Teach candidates how to handle the new media landscape.

From longtime GOP luminaries to the party's rising stars, almost everyone asked about the Republicans' Nov. 6 election drubbing seems to agree that a wholesale update is necessary for a party that appears to be running years behind Democrats in adapting to rapidly changing campaigns and an evolving electorate.

Interviews with more than a dozen Republicans at all levels of the party indicated that postelection soul-searching must quickly turn into a period of action.

"We've got to have a very brutally honest review from stem to stern of what we did and what we didn't do, and what worked and what failed," said former Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour, who ran the party in the 1990s.

The party "has to modernize in a whole wide range of ways," added former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, who ran against White House nominee Mitt Romney in the 2012 presidential primary. "We were clearly wrong on a whole range of fronts."

To determine what went wrong, the Republican National Committee is examining every detail of the 2012 elections, with the goal of rebuilding the party for the future — much as the Democratic Party did in the 1980s after suffering a series of stinging losses at all levels of government.

Now, as was the case back then, the stakes are enormous for the party that failed to win the White House and has lost the popular vote for several national elections in a row. They're perhaps even higher for Republicans grappling for ways to court a rapidly changing electorate whose voting groups don't naturally gravitate toward the GOP. The dangers of failing to act could be severe: permanent minority status.

So it's little surprise that after the election, some Republicans were quick to sound stark warnings.

The scale of the losses largely shocked a party whose top-shelf operatives went into Election Day believing Republicans had at least a decent chance of capturing the White House and gaining ground in Congress, where Republicans controlled the House and had a sizable minority in the Senate.

Instead, Romney lost all but one of the nine contested states, North Carolina, to President Barack Obama and was trounced in the electoral vote. Republicans also lost ground to Democrats in both houses of Congress, though Republicans retained their House majority.

How to move forward dominated the discussions at last week's Republican Governors Association meeting in Las Vegas, where some of the party's leading voices castigated Romney's assessment — made in what was supposed to be a private telephone call to donors — that Obama won re-election because of the "gifts" the president had provided to blacks, Hispanics and young voters. These governors faulted Romney.

Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal attributed Romney's loss to a lack of "a specific vision that connected with the American people."

Massachusetts Sen. Scott Brown, who describes himself as a "pro-choice moderate Republican," echoed Republicans across the spectrum when he said last week: "We need to be a larger-tent party." Brown lost his seat to Democrat Elizabeth Warren.

Across the board, Republicans say that arguably the most urgent task facing the party is changing its attitude about immigration as it looks to woo Hispanics. This rapidly growing group voted overwhelmingly for Obama, by margins of 7-to-1 over Romney, who had shifted to the right on the issue during the GOP primary.

It didn't take long after the election for even staunch conservatives to start changing their tune on immigration. Days after the election, even conservative TV host Sean Hannity said he would support an immigration bill.

Said Barbour: "If we would be for good economic policy in terms of immigration, that would go a long way toward solving the political problem."It's not just Hispanics.

Republicans said they also have work to do with single women and younger voters, many of whom tend to be more liberal on social issues than the current Republican Party. These Republicans said a change in tone is needed, though not a change in principles such as opposition to abortion.

"We need to make sure that we're not perceived as intolerant," said Ron Kaufman, a veteran Republican strategist who advised Romney's campaign. "The bottom line is we were perceived to be intolerant on some issues. And tone-deaf on others."

Republicans also said the party has to work on its relationship with working-class voters.

"Republicans have to start understanding that small business and entrepreneurs are important, but the people who work for them are also important," said Rep. Charles Bass, R-N.H., who lost his seat to Democrat Ann Kuster. "We've got to be compassionate conservatives."

Party leaders also said the GOP needs to change how it communicates its message. Obama's campaign, they said, was particularly effective at talking directly to voters, and building relationships over long periods of time, whereas the GOP was more focused on top-down communication such as TV ads and direct mail.

"There are whole sections of the American public that we didn't even engage with," Gingrich said.

Others pointed to the pressing need to recruit candidates who know how to stick to a carefully honed message, especially in a Twitter-driven era. Among their case studies: Senate candidates Richard Mourdock in Indiana and Todd Akin in Missouri, who both discussed rape and pregnancy during the campaign, to the chagrin of party leaders looking to narrow the Democrats' advantage among women.

"We need candidates who are capable of articulating their policy positions without alienating massive voting blocs," said Kevin McLaughlin, a Republican operative who worked on several Senate races for the National Republican Senatorial Committee.

Many Republicans say the party doesn't have a choice but to change — and quickly.

Said Kaufmann: "In this business, either you learn and grow or you die."

i think he's going to be among the top 3 experienced GOP statesman in the discussion. I can't name many repubs with the connections, $, power, confidence, respect, and ability to lead, that jeb possesses.

It'll be laughable... a Rubio lecturing Jeb on how the world really works lol... Jeb's family WROTE the fcking history books.

i think he's going to be among the top 3 experienced GOP statesman in the discussion. I can't name many repubs with the connections, $, power, confidence, respect, and ability to lead, that jeb possesses.

It'll be laughable... a Rubio lecturing Jeb on how the world really works lol... Jeb's family WROTE the fcking history books.

So what if his family "wrote the history books"? What does that - whatever it's supposed to mean - say about Jeb himself? Sure it tells us much less that his own actions do - actions like those in the Terri Schiavo case. Coincidentally, that one case is enough for me personally to never want that guy near a position of power ever again.

i think he's going to be among the top 3 experienced GOP statesman in the discussion. I can't name many repubs with the connections, $, power, confidence, respect, and ability to lead, that jeb possesses.

It'll be laughable... a Rubio lecturing Jeb on how the world really works lol... Jeb's family WROTE the fcking history books.

I think another Bush/Clinton matchup in 2016 is entirely possible.

Yes but do you think the Bush's wrote a "good" history?Compared to the Clintons?

It’s not a good time to be a Republican. The circular firing squad — it was Mitt Romney’s fault! Demographics did it! Conservatives messed everything up! — has begun in earnest even though the 2012 election is less than two weeks gone.

Regardless of whom you choose to blame — we lean toward demographics and a GOP turnout operation that is a pale imitation of what Democrats have put in place — it’s clear that the Republican Party needs an overhaul. And the sooner everyone in the party recognizes that, the better.

That said, things aren’t that bad for Republicans. Here are four reasons for optimism.

1. The party’s superstars are coming of age. The 2012 election for Republicans was sort of like the 2004 election for Democrats in terms of candidate quality. The candidates who ran in 2004/2012 were a mix of people who had to run this time around (Romney, former Minnesota governor Tim Pawlenty) or who figured the weakness of the field gave them a chance to score an upset (former senator Rick Santorum of Pennsylvania). In each case, the superstars-in-waiting for the party were one election away from making runs in their own right. So, in 2008, we saw Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton run. And in 2016, we are likely to see Republicans such as Sen. Marco Rubio (Fla.), New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal and Rep. Paul Ryan (Wis.) — all of whom have significantly more star power than Romney — make the race.

2. There are a historic number of GOP governors. Next year, 30 states will be run by Republicans — the highest number for either party in more than a decade. Those 30 chief executives include Jindal and Christie, who are already getting major 2016 buzz, and also New Mexico’s Susana Martinez, the first Hispanic woman elected governor from either party, and Nevada’s Brian Sandoval, a Hispanic former federal judge. Both are likely to play leading roles in the party’s attempts to court Latino voters. And then there are the other 26 governors who all will have real opportunities to rebrand the Republican Party based on how they choose to govern between now and 2016. (Keep an eye on Indiana’s Mike Pence, who has designs on a national candidacy down the line.) Remember that when the Democratic Party found itself in the political wilderness after the 1988 election, it turned to its governors — including the boy wonder from Arkansas — for ideas on how to remake itself. And we know how that turned out.

3. The electoral map is bad, but not that bad. We’ve written extensively on how where Republicans currently find themselves in terms of the electoral map is similar to where Democrats found themselves in the 1980s. That’s broadly true, but things for Republicans today aren’t nearly as dire as they looked for Democrats three decades ago. From 1968 to 1988, Democratic presidential nominees averaged a paltry 113 electoral votes. From 1992 to 2012, Republicans have averaged a much more robust 210. While demographic and population trends are clearly working against Republicans — Texas as a swing state in 2020, anyone? — the party is not that far, electorally speaking, from creating a credible path back to 270 electoral votes. Find a way to make the industrial Midwest — Ohio, Iowa, Wisconsin and even Pennsylvania — competitive again and the map suddenly doesn’t look so bad for the GOP.

4. History is on their side. Presidential politics in the post-World War II era tend to be defined by the pendulum effect. The pendulum swings one way for eight (or so) years and then has a tendency to swing back the other way — almost no matter what. Al Gore lost his bid for 12 straight years of Democratic control of the White House even though the economy was humming along and public opinion on President Bill Clinton remained positive. The exception to that rule was the 12 years that Republicans controlled the White House from 1980 to 1992, but George H.W. Bush was unable to win a second term thanks to Bill Clinton. Of course, historical trends are true until they aren’t anymore (No president can be reelected with unemployment above 7.4 percent!), but the tendency of the American public to bounce between the two parties — at least at the presidential level— every eight years is pretty consistent.

Mitt Romney, who just two weeks ago was the Republican Party’s standard-bearer, seen by many as the all-but-elected president of the United States, has turned into a punching bag for fellow Republicans looking to distance themselves from his controversial “gifts” remark.

“What the president’s campaign did was focus on certain members of his base coalition, give them extraordinary financial gifts from the government, and then work very aggressively to turn them out to vote,” Romney said during a call with campaign donors Wednesday.

Whether it’s an instance of politicians smelling blood in the water as the party, following Romney’s defeat, finds itself without a figurehead, or genuine outrage, a number of Republicans have eagerly castigated their former nominee.

Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal, who has seemingly been on a campaign to refute Romney’s remark, once again reiterated his opposition on “Fox News Sunday.”

“We as a Republican Party have to campaign for every single vote. If we want people to like us, we have to like them first. And you don’t start to like people by insulting them and saying their votes were bought. We are an aspirational party,” Jindal said.

Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker echoed Jindal’s remarks, and offered the recent success of Republican governors as an example for the party as a whole.

“We have to show that we are serious about reaching out and helping everyone, not just a group here, not just a group there,” Walker said, “but everyone in the country, live their piece of the American dream. And I think that starts with our governors as great messengers.”

Former presidential candidate Newt Gingrich, who made several memorable comments of his own on the campaign trail, deemed Romney’s remark “nuts.”

“I think it’s nuts. I mean, first of all, it’s insulting. The job of a political leader in part is to understand the people,” he said on ABC’s “This Week.” “If we can’t offer a better future that is believable to more people, we’re not going to win.”

And South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham, on NBC’s “Meet the Press,” tied Romney’s remarks to a Republican “death spiral.”

“When you’re in a hole, you stop digging. He keeps digging,” Graham said.

The party’s new outreach efforts, it appears, are first aimed toward Latino voters, who overwhelmingly supported President Obama over Romney, 71% to 27%. Republican leaders have begun toting immigration reform as a new objective, evangelical leaders have requested a deadline for Congress and Obama to take action on the issue, and the co-founder of Romney’s top “super PAC” is founding another PAC: Republicans for Immigration Reform.

As for the future of the party, perhaps all one has to do is look to a rerun of the latest episode of “Saturday Night Live,” where New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie made an appearance capitalizing on his bipartisan displays alongside Obama following Superstorm Sandy. Or look toward Iowa, where Florida Sen. Marco Rubio delivered a 24-minute speech during Iowa Gov. Terry Branstad’s birthday celebration today, a trip that has sparked early speculation about his 2016 presidential aspirations.

he started a thread saying he was leaving (after also making the same statement many times)

I just asked him if he still intends to leave

bfd

The biggest cry for attention one can imagine! Pathetic.

“There is no Romney 333333 wing in the party that he needs to address,” said Ed Rogers, a longtime Republican strategist. “He never developed an emotional foothold within the GOP so he can exit the stage anytime and no one will mourn.”

“There is no Romney 333333 wing in the party that he needs to address,” said Ed Rogers, a longtime Republican strategist. “He never developed an emotional foothold within the GOP so he can exit the stage anytime and no one will mourn.”

Thanks for playing. Bye.

Mittens needs to explain the failure of his prject ORCA and how his store rippoed so many off.

“There is no Romney 333333 wing in the party that he needs to address,” said Ed Rogers, a longtime Republican strategist. “He never developed an emotional foothold within the GOP so he can exit the stage anytime and no one will mourn.”

Thanks for playing. Bye.

it's really too bad that Romney doesn't drinkI can't think of a better reason to get hammered than getting your ass kicked in a national election and not even have any clue that it was going to happen